Using recently-available data from the New Immigrant Survey, we find that previous selfemploymentexperience in an immigrant´s country of origin is an important determinant oftheir self-employment status in the U.S., increasing the probability of being self-employed byabout 7 percent...

Existing research examining the self-selection of immigrants suffers from a lack ofinformation on the immigrants´ labor force activities in the home country, quotas limiting whois allowed to enter the destination country, and non-economic factors such as internal civilstrife in the home...